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Nalates Urriah

Second Life Third-Party Dev Meeting 2017 w38

The Alex Ivy 64-bit viewer will update early next week (#39). The last couple of blocking bugs are being fixed. Oz Linden thinks they are probably down to 1 problem last blocking problem, pipeline stalls. A special branch of the viewer is designed to find and fix that problem. Those experience the problem will get a copy of it for testing.

Voice is getting a new SDK update. It addresses couple long-standing problems.

There is a fix in Linden Viewers where the Lindens extended the retry time. So, they are being more successful connecting to voice. It takes longer to connect when there are problems, but it is more successful. If there are no problems, it is a quick connect.

Darling

Manually killing the viewer’s voice server prevents it restarting as it once did. Now, restart the viewer to kill and start the voice server. Then it works.

The Maintenance viewer just went out a couple of hours before the meeting (Friday noon). It uses new Vivox SDK. This version is Not compatible with previous versions. Some third-party viewers and Linux versions commonly require users to copy the app from the Linden viewer and drop it in the third-party viewer. Or to use older versions of the voice app with new versions of the viewer, for various reasons. That is not going to work.

Now the viewer and voice app will need to be versions made after the change to the new Vivox SDK are built in.

The Wolf Pack viewer is a diagnostic version of the viewer made to give the Lindens more information about errors and problems not handled well now. The changes are designed to better handle the currently unhandled errors and provide better data on the problems to the Lindens.

Other than the improved diagnostics, there are no other fixes/changes.

A new update to the 360image viewer should come out next week (#39) or maybe the week after (#40). The Lab is again making progress on this one. They are also building in better support for 360-images in Place Pages, which may be out in next month.

Changes to the Linden splash screen are coming along with new widgets, all currently in QA. The SL Wiki will be updated with information about the widgets. Old widgets will continue to work. I wonder for how long. But, likely for some considerable time.

The Code Signing Key the Lab uses had to be updated. The key uses third-party identification to verify who wrote the software. Microsoft tracks how many people complain about software written by the key owner. At some point, Microsoft decides they are trustworthy because of the number of installs without complaint. But, Windows Defender will warn you when they are unsure, meaning they have not seen enough no-complaint installs to be sure.

So, you’ll likely see Microsoft’s Windows Defender complaining about your next install of a Linden Viewer. It is just Microsoft being overly cautious in its ignorance.

Estate Management Improvements – The new management tools are being worked on now, No ETA. Among the changes is a bigger ban list window for easier editing.

Server versions are advancing. The Lab is making good progress on improving servers and moving the system toward the cloud.

The timeline for the cloud move is undefined. Too many parts and unknown factors. They are currently experimenting with moving parts of the backend to the cloud. The viewer update notification is running from the cloud now. That was simple because there is little integration and interdependence with the rest of the system.

Other parts, when moved to the cloud, have revealed problems. Some are problems that are happening on co-lo servers became way more noticeable (worse) when run running from the cloud. So, those are back in co-lo and being worked on.

The Lab’s first goal in the move is to just get everything working. Next, they will start work on exploiting the advantages of the cloud.

So, one advantage available is for a region with most of its users in, say, Brazil which could have their simulators hosted in-country to provide better user to simulator response time.

This is an interesting section of the meeting: Investing in SL. Oz Linden is very clear the Lab has long-term investment plans for Second Life.

Will we get mirrors? No mirrors. Would require a new render engine, which is NOT on the road map…. for now… or anytime soon.

There is a new Premium Member Benefit in the works, soon we will see it. Plus, a couple of new ones being talked about that would be farther out.

If you have ideas for what would make for a good Premium benefit, let Oz Linden know.

No work on Groups. Groups are not on the do-it-now list or the do-it-next list. Current server work is closing exploits and making improvements.

EEP – Extended Environment Project is progressing. Requires a fair amount of change on the backend. They are just starting to test those changes. When the backend changes working and stable the changes will roll out to the main grid. Then project viewers will come out and users can.

There is no ETA on EEP as Oz keeps pulling Rider Linden off EEP to fight fires. He is a good firefighter.

Firestorm releases? ETA? No comment… The sort of hold up now is the Vivox SDK release. The FS Team wants to get the changes into their viewer to reduce voice problems their users are experiencing.

The login process has changed because of recent problems that revealed existing problems. The crashes the logged thousands of people out immediately threw huge loads on the login servers. The viewer retry process aggravated the problems by overloading the servers because the retries were coming so fast. The retry frequency has been slowed down.

That retry slowing and improved login processes have improved login success rates. It is expected the next time the system is recovering from a problem and tons of people are trying to log in things will work better.

Also, the Lindens are working on the texture caches to make them faster. Revamping the caching system is a complex project as so many parts of the SL system are touched.

There is a place in the Viewer Statistics panel where you can see the cache performance information.